Too Much To Say
by greyslostwho
Summary: A collection of random Maddison oneshots, drabbles and musings. This is my fave Greys pairing ever! Please R&R!
1. You Never Knew

**TOO MUCH TO SAY**

**Lots of totally random, totally unconnected Maddison oneshots, drabbles and little musings. **

You Never Knew

He used to watch her before she even knew his name. She sat at the front of Organic Chemistry with Eleanor Rivers and kept her bespectacled head down in the anatomy textbook. Her hand would be the first in the air to answer every question, seconded quickly by Derek. He would listen to her voice, rolling so easily off her tongue, as she answered everything: correctly. He watched Derek stiffen every time she usurped his position as the cleverest with a wild grin on his face.

She was at a party a couple of months into their first semester. She was sat with another girl, one with long, black, witchy hair, and with a couple of boys, blonde, muscular boys. He was talking to some girl, a little blonde with big brown eyes who he had picked out from the whole room as one who he would be able to get into bed later. But the flash of red every time she turned her head distracted him.

"Mark?" the girl asked, clinging onto his arm and smiling, "Are you ok?"

He tore his eyes away from her. He looked at his potential conquest of the evening and realised her name had evaded him.

"I...I don't feel well." he said, "I'm going to go and take a break."

And with that, he walked away, leaving the girl - Sofia, maybe? Sara? - to sink into a chair by herself, all hopes of getting laid evaporating. He kept his eyes trained on Addison as he walked to the door, and then stood outside for a while, taking deep breaths and wondering what had happened to him. He'd never even spoken to the chick from Organic Chemistry.

He realised with a jolt that this was the first time he had ever walked away from potential sex.

Something was very wrong.

**Well, it's just a little stand alone thing, but I'm going to post lots more under this story, all Maddison romance, angst or whatever, some angsty, some one-sided, and some FLUFFY!**

**xx**


	2. Maybe

**OK, so here's another one. Because I couldn't stay away.**

Maybe

"If I had called you before Derek, would things have been different?"  
She sighed. She didn't want to have this discussion right now.

"Mark, leave it, ok? Just leave it be!"

He sighed and put his head in his hands. "But we're in a mess here, Addison! We can't keep going on like this! I can't keep doing this to Derek!"

She looked at him scornfully. "Don't play the conscience card on me, Mark Sloane, you're a man whore and we both know it."

"But I don't do this to my best friend. Derek's like my brother, Addie, this isn't right! I'm not just going to continue screwing his girlfriend behind his back!"

"And what do you want me to do about it?"

"Tell him. Tell him what's been going on. Tell him you don't feel the same way about him anymore!"  
Her eyes flashed. He shouldn't be able to read her this well. "What do you mean? I never said that!"

"Don't try to fool me, Addison. People who are happily in love don't do this!"  
"I'm just...confused, Mark. I want this, I want it so much...but I do love Derek, and I love what we have, and I don't want to end it for the sake of an...affair."

The words were laced with disgust. At the two of them.

"This doesn't have to just be an affair, Addie! We could... after Derek's forgiven us..."

She smiled, and laughed bitterly. "What, Mark? Date?" she moved closer to him, so her lips were inches from his and he could feel her warm breath. "You and I couldn't date." she murmured, and placed a kiss on his lips, "We'd...we're bad for each other." Another kiss. "It's..." another kiss. "All about..." Kisses, trailing down his jaw, his neck. "This." she said definitely. "We'd drive each other crazy."

Mark tangled his hands in her hair, knowing this resolved nothing. "You drive me crazy." he said, before starting to kiss her back.

XXX

As they lay, sprawled out on Mark's bed, exhausted, he murmured: "You never answered my question, Addie. If I had called you first, would things have been different?"

She turned her head away so he couldn't see the tears of confusion and possibility.

"Maybe."

**I kind of imagined this sometime during med-school, Derek and Addison are dating, but Mark and Addie have a lack of self control when together...**


	3. Guilt

**Another one, because I really have no life.**

Guilt

His favourite part of her: just below her collarbone. He loved how her breath hitched in her throat when he kissed it. He loved how her eyes darkened and her lips fell to his. He loved how she whispered in his ear:

"God, Mark, stop it! What if Derek comes home?"

But they both knew Derek wouldn't come home. They both knew he would be at the hospital until at least three in the morning - oblivious that his best friend had taken keeping his wife company to a whole new level.

He loved the way she half dragged him into the bed that she and Derek shared, rarely now, because of their shifts, but it was still their's, and he loved the way she muttered, "God, this is bad!" as he slowly peeled off every layer of her clothing.

He loved the way she never stopped kissing him, not for one second, until they fell, side by side, shattered.

After that, it changed. He hated how she would turn to face the wall away from him. He hated how they would lay in silence for a minute or two, and then she would sit up, wrapping blankets around her, as if trying to hide herself from him.

He hated how she would say, "Go, Mark." And how every single time she would give him some variation on "It won't happen again."

He hated how she wouldn't meet his eyes, and she would cry sometimes, thinking he couldn't hear her.

He hated the guilt in her eyes, and he struggled to understand how something so immoral could feel so...heavenly.

**Just another random rambling from my slightly disturbed, Maddison obsessed brain. **


	4. Wink

**This came to me during the thrilling fun of a history exam.**

Wink

She could see the back of his head, diagonally across the hall from hers. He was slouched down in his chair, tapping his pen on the table and tapping his foot on the floor. She checked the clock. He couldn't possibly have finished. This was the first med exam they were taking, and they'd only had forty minutes out of seventy so far. He couldn't possibly have finished. Guiltily, she stared down at her own, complete paper.

But Mark Sloane wasn't that clever. Well, she didn't know that for sure, but he never said anything in lectures. It was always his friend, Derek Shepherd, the cute one, that she was competing with. She'd never thought of Mark Sloane as one of the particularly bright ones.

God, he was infuriating! Why had he stopped? Surely he hadn't finished his paper. Maybe he found it so hard that he couldn't do any of it. Maybe he would drop out when the results came in. But that didn't seem to fit him either. In fact, nothing seemed to fit him. She'd never spoken to him in her life, and she'd never really had any urge to - until now. He was confusing her.

When the exam finally ended, she walked out and stood with a group of her girl friends, chatting about the paper but watching the door with a wary eye, waiting for a pale faced, failed Mark to exit. But he walked out with Derek, laughing and chatting, and then he caught her eye and winked. She turned her attention back to her friend Stacey.

"Helllooo? Addison? Earth to Addison!"

"What? Sorry." she said, returning to the conversation.

"Who's that guy?"

"Oh, just some guy from organic chemistry."

"You stared at him the whole way through the second half of the exam."

"I did not." Addison said, but she felt a blush creeping up her neck.

When the test results were published months later, she was already dating Derek, and she'd had a few sparing conversations with Mark - who she had aptly christened Mark the Man Whore. They stood, the three of them, staring at the board. Derek's name was a comfortable half way through the list, announcing a solid result. But the two top names came as a shock.

MONTGOMERY, ADDISON - 100

SLOANE, MARK - 98

He grinned at her. "Next time, Montgomery."

She grinned back. "In your dreams, Sloane."

**That was not one of my best, but it was just a little rambling that was driving me insane not being written!**


	5. First Kiss

First Kiss

She wiped her eyes fiercely. _For God's sake, Addison, pull yourself together! So you and Derek had a little fight. You'll make up tomorrow. Don't be pathetic._

Mark looked at her sympathetically.

"Don't you have something better to do?" she said, "Like find yourself a new slut?"

He shrugged, choosing not to rise to the bait. He put a hand gently on her arm. "He's just stressed about the exam at the moment, Addy. He'll be back smiling in no time and you'll forget this ever happened."

Suddenly it all seemed too much. "How could he say that I care about myself more than his grades? He knows that's not true! I know how important it is! And we had an agreement, anyway, that we wouldn't let our relationship spoil our chances of getting our doctorates!"

Mark slung an arm round her loosely. "He knows that really, Ads. He's mad at himself for not doing so well on the last exam, and he's taking it out the only way he knows how - on the people he loves."

"Yeah, I guess." she said. They reached Addison's apartment and she smiled at him.

"You want to come in?" she asked, suddenly seeing Mark as more than just the Man Whore. He grinned.

"I've gotta be going - gotta find myself a new slut, like you said." he laughed, suddenly needing to get away. He couldn't stand there with her smiling at him like that. He was going to lose control.

"Oh." she said, and for a moment disappointment flickered across her features. "See you, then. Thanks - for making me feel better."

"My pleasure." Mark said and as she stared up at him through her pretty blue eyes, chewing on her lip slightly as if nervous, he realised this might be the last time he ever got to comfort her. The last time her and Derek fought.

The first and the last.

So he bent his head and kissed her. For a moment she froze, and then he felt her arms coming around his neck and her body pressing into his up against the wall outside her apartment. He ran his tongue along her bottom lip, evoking a groan deep in her throat and driving her to open her mouth. Their tongues linked and he saw fireworks on the back of his eyelids. Then, slowly, she backed away.

"Now go find your slut." she said, but her voice was less steady than it had been. Mark grinned weakly. "See you around, Addison."

She smiled, and walked into her apartment. Because that was who they were - neither of them liked to talk about these things.

**A kiss was calling out to be written. Please review/ give me ideas for more drabbles!**


	6. Snapshot

Snapshot

She smiled as she looked down at the picture. It was slightly tattered around the edges, but other than that it was just perfect.

They were on the Eiffel Tower - Derek, Addison, Mark. Mark's current 'slut' had taken it. Derek had his arm round Addison's shoulders and he was whispering something in her ear. You could see the wedding ring glinting on his finger. She remembered the moment like it was yesterday. Mark had said something, made a joke and she was looking up into his eyes and laughing.

The picture was powerful. It told her what she had never been able to admit to herself. That even when Derek was right there, even when she and Derek had been happy - Mark had been there too.

And it was Mark who held her gaze.

She sighed and tucked the photo back into the box of stuff she hadn't been able to unpack. This photo didn't belong here, in LA. This photo didn't belong anywhere anymore.

Because the two people staring lovingly at each other without even realising it were too damn stubborn to do anything about it.

**Well, that was inspired at three in the morning the night before a Literature exam!!!!**

**Review please!**


	7. Vodka

**Sorry its been so long. I should be revising for chemistry.**

Vodka

"You're drunk, Markie." she giggled, tripping over her own feet as she stumbled into her room. He followed behind her, not quite as unsteady but just as inebriated.

"Probably." he laughed, flicking the light switch on and off a couple of times before he decided on off. He sunk into her bed, face down in her baby blue pillows.

"It smells of you." he stated, and breathed in as deeply as was humanly possible.

"Uh huh." Addison said and flopped beside him, laying on her back and staring up at the ceiling.

"Do you think Derek is with someone else tonight?" Addison asked, the happy drunkeness giving way to the weepy drunkeness.

Mark sighed. It wasn't as if this hadn't happened before. Addison and Derek had stupid fights, Derek stormed out and Addison came crying to Mark with a bottle of Smirnoff.

"I'm sure he's cooling off in a bar somewhere." he said, turning his head to face her, smiling in spite of himself at her wild blue eyes and her curly red hair. "Do you know what the most beautiful thing in the world is?" he murmured, slurring his words slightly.

Addison nodded. "That question, I know." she said slowly, as if talking to a four year old. "Vodka." she announced proudly, and then burst into fits of giggles.

Mark suddenly realised he wasn't as drunk as he had thought as he watched the tears welling in her eyes and felt like a knife in his heart.

"You kissed me the first time I fell out with Derek." Addison said, a huge watery smile lighting up her face.

Mark nodded. She reached out and cupped his face with her hand, shuffling closer to him.

"Can I kiss you this time?" she said.

He nodded slowly. Her lips enclosed his.

**Review please!!!!!!!!**


	8. Better

**I haven't done one of these for a while - but I was watching reruns of Season 3 - it's got to terrestrial television in the UK at last!! Hehe. **

**And then there was that shower scene...**

Better

He stepped out of the shower, his heart still thumping. God, sex with Addison was good. Even if it was a booty call, and even if he knew he was being used, really, this arrangement, this was good. He sighed and wrapped a towel around him, stepping slightly out of the room.

Derek was sat on the bed next to Addison. His ex best friend turned to stare at him, but Addison looked away from him pointedly. And that's what hurt.

"Well, this is awkward." he said, grinning slightly, thinking how much of a mess they had become from the innocent, ambitious kids they had been when they'd met.

"I feel so much better now." Derek said, chucked back his champagne, and left. Addison sat there, staring at the closed door. He tucked the towel around his waist and sat down next to her.

Not knowing what to say, he reached out a hand to put on her shoulder.

"Don't touch me." she snapped, and he froze, until the tear rolling from her eye dripped off her chin.

Then she turned to face Mark and kissed him.

Because that was the only way she could feel better.

**Reviewies!! :-)**


	9. Resent

Resent

"Sloane."

"Mark, it's Addison."

"Addie?" Blearily. She hadn't even stopped to consider the time.

"Addie? What is it? Did something happen to Derek?"

A bitter, inward laugh, as she thought of her fiance. "No. We had a fight. I told him he works too much."

A sigh. "We're not doing this again."

She knew what he meant. Their sordid little hook-ups every time Derek didn't quite deliver as Mr Perfect.

"Why?"

"I won't be used, Addison. And I certainly won't be used against my best friend."

She had nothing to say.

"Sorry, Addie. I'll talk to him tomorrow."

"Sure." It was bitter, empty.

"Night, Addison. Try to get some sleep."

She didn't respond. The dialling tone was thick in his ear.

For the first time, it wasn't just jealousy he felt, but resent.

When Addison and Derek made up the next day, he smiled.

**Please review. It means so much to every writer.**


	10. Possibly

**A cute bit of future fluff for Jody (still waiting on that email address lol). And in response to her unrespondable (is that a word?) email:**

**I do have LJ, I just haven't gotten round to posting much Maddison on there yet. But I will. You got LJ?**

**x**

**

* * *

**

This is how I think their future should be. In my world of denial.

:D

Possibly

Addison didn't like to look at the way the past ten years had changed her for the worse. Adultery, a divorce, an abortion, leaving three jobs and her infertility.

She liked to look at the way it had changed her for the better. How she had finally liberated herself from a marriage that had rotted to the core, taken it upon herself to sort her life out, been big enough to admit when she was wrong and taken her bad juju like a man. (Well, a woman.)

She looked back, holding her little adopted son Felix in her arms, and realised that for every miserable day, every time she cried, every lonely night, she would have years of unpredicted, ordinary happiness hereonin.

She smiled, kissed his ebony skin on his forehead, and sunk back into the arms of the man behind her.

"Mark..."

He opened one eye, still bleary from sleep. "Hmmmm?"

"I love you, you know that, right?"

He grinned slightly, and closed his eyes. "And I love you, Addison. Now, shhh, you'll wake our little boy."

_Our little boy. _

She closed her eyes and rested her head back on his chest. Soon, she felt the even rhythm of his sleep.

She might have found her place in the world. It might be impossible for her to ever be happier.

Possibly.

**Reviews are loved. And check out Picking Up The Pieces. (no, I'm not afraid of shameless advertising)**


	11. Idiot

**Another little Maddison musing, to keep all the thousands of other Maddison fans in denial going. (Come on, guys. I know you're out there. Somewhere.)**

**All these drabbles seem to exist in one "Too Much To Say" universe, where they met in med-school, and Addison started to date Derek but had had affairs with Mark before her marriage to Derek. And they end up happily ever after. :D I'm going to keep it that way for now.**

**

* * *

**

Mark - on a plane.

Idiot

Where was he going? It wasn't like he hadn't done this before. That was the problem with being Mark Sloan, Plastics God. He had more money than he knew what to do with these days, and it usually ended in him making stupid, idiotic decisions.

Like flying to LAX on a search for his ex-best friend's ex-wife. And also the only woman he ever really loved.

Addison Forbes Montgomery-used-to-be-Shepherd. His Addie.

This was the fourth time he had done this in the past three months. Taken up some random case that even a Plastics resident could have done, and flown out to some high profile hospital, hoping to find his very own high profile Neonatal surgeon there.

Today he was nagged by Charlotte King for the most part of 24 hours. He asked at the front desk if they had Addison Montgomery in employment, and they said no.

He flew home again, not realising said Neonatal surgeon had been less than a mile away at the Oceanside Wellness Center, pretending she didn't have to cut people open, or see her adulterous partner ever again.

This idiot was so close, but so far.

**geesh, that was depressing. Sorry and all that.**


	12. Six Days

**Six Days**

That was the week Derek went away with his sisters, the last family holiday he'd probably ever be on. Addison moved into Mark's dorm room, curled herself around him in his bed all weekend, cuddled up to him on the sofa studying at night. For six days, and six days only, they played at being together.

It was the little things that mattered. Mark tucking a curl of hair behind her ears when it fell into her face, Addison shoving his feet out of the way when she was slumped down on the sofa and they were blocking the television. Neither of them said anything, they weren't for discussing these things, but it was one of the best weeks they'd had in a long time... the secrecy, the guilt, it was leaching the life out of the pair of them, and out of their relationship and friendship with Derek.

But for six uncomplicated days, they could see how it could have been.

How, if either of them had the guts to own up to it, it could still be.

**Hope you liked!! I was watching Maddison AUs on Youtube and just had to pour out drabbles.**


	13. Grey Hair

**Grey Hair**

It wasn't red anymore, her hair. It was grey, and coarse, and she'd cut it off into a bob.

His had been grey for a lot longer that hers had - it would be wrong to say he was less vain, he was one of the vainest people she knew, but he had his vanity in _other areas_, not the colour of his hair.

He wouldn't say he missed the red hair - although it had been the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen, and even when she'd been married to someone else, and when she'd been absent - he hadn't been able to be with redheads. Ever. He just... he couldn't risk calling out her name or something, because it would have made him realised how he truly felt about her.

She was still beautiful... regal looking almost, but her hair was grey.

But he liked that. It marked years, it marked out their forever.

**xxx**


	14. The Finish Line

**Thought I'd chuck in an AU - if they'd reached the end of the infamous 60 day pact**

**The Finish Line**

All it took were a few whispered words in her ear that morning, and her breath and hitched and her pulse was racing.  
He wasn't even touching her, and she could feel him behind her... even when he'd waltzed away into a surgery she could feel his breath on her neck.

It took her a minute to find an empty on call room, and a couple of seconds to call his pager.  
He was there within minutes. He turned the lock on the door, and neither of them said a word.

After shaky steps towards him, she found arms winding around her, and she responded accordingly, finding Mark's lips on hers like it was the most natural thing in the world. His hands found their way into her hair, and she was flush against him... and it wasn't enough... this wasn't enough... all of a sudden the last 60 days weren't enough...

Clothes were shed quickly, and they were fast... the feel of flesh on flesh, bodies so tightly wound together... it was too much for them both.  
Addison collapsed beside him, panting heavily, each breath not quite filling her lungs, and smiled when his arm twist under her, pulling her towards him.

"I didn't think you'd make it." she whispered, "I hoped you would... but I didn't think you could do it."  
He smiled, and kissed her forehead lightly. She slung one arm loosely over his chest.

"I'm glad you did."

**It's a bit longer than a real drabble... :S**


	15. Hourglass

**I AM SO EXCITED ABOUT THE CROSSOVER!!!!!!!**

**Literally, although I'm pretty sure, rationally, that it will end and Addison will trot off back to LA and Mark will stay in Seattle (with or without Lexie), I am holding onto a shred of hope that the pair of them might see sense and actually GET IT ON.**

**Anyways...**

Hourglass

Mark has a daughter. Mark. Mark Sloan...

And she's loud, and obnoxious, and she's pretty sure she hates Lexie (this only makes Addison approve of her more) and she argues with Mark makes her feel young again.

Strangely, considering Mark's about to be a grandfather, and that should make her see the and trickling through the hourglass if nothing else does.

But she likes Sloan, and even she's not sure why that is... over the years she's found people who repel her initially can be the ones, in the end, that she wishes she'd held onto, Mark being one of them, and people she's sure she'll never understand become far closer to her than others. Three weeks after Sloan's surgeries are finished, when she's not even sure why she's in Seattle still, she takes Sloan and the baby, Mark's grandson, little Jacob Montgomery Riley - she'd tried, half-heartedly, to argue with the middle name - out for icecream, and she'd spent two hours talking about babies and holding the little boy, and watching the blonde girl with Mark's eyes eat Raspberry Ripple, closing her eyes slightly in enjoyment.

She'd missed this, some semblance of a family, which was what Mark seemed to give her.

She'd missed him.

**A/N: More to come, probably ;)**


	16. A Hundred Years

**OMG, I don't think I could be more excited about the crossover if I tried...**

**A Hundred Years**

He's not the same man he used to be, and he's sure she's not the same woman. It's been years, it feels like hundred years, and though it hasn't quite reached the century mark, it might as well have done.

Because he hasn't seen her since she was forty-one, and he was forty-two, and he had a daughter for a short while and a grandson for an even shorter while, and everything had gone so wrong that they'd both walked out the door without looking back.

He would be ninety-two this year, and he hardly left the house anymore... when his children came to visit they mainly talked about their mother, and how she was getting married again, and he couldn't help thinking how even Lexie, who was so much younged than him, was still far too old to be getting married.

He'd lived in DC since the divorce, when the kids were small, and he'd almost come to think of it as home. He hadn't been out of the state in at least ten years, but he his daughter had insisted that this was something he shouldn't miss, that Meredith would need him there... he scowled at the thought of his ex-wife and her new husband, sitting in the front row beside the widow, and he realised he'd become a bitter old man.

"Mark... Mark Sloan?" a shaky voice asked from beside him, and though it was weathered by age, there was something about it he recognised. He turned and _looked _at the woman next to him for the first time. He recognised her eyes instantly, though her face was lined dramatically, and fire-hair had long since turned to snow.

"Addie?" he breathed, and for a moment they weren't at Derek's funeral, they weren't so old they could barely see and hear, and their children hadn't grown up and moved away and had children, and he hadn't fought through two years of cancer, and then another six months, and she hadn't had two failed marriages and so many years alone.

They were Mark and Addison again, and _this _was what they did to one another, even after a hundred years...

They rendered each other speechless.

**No idea where that came from.**


	17. Stupid Bloody Crossover

**Stupid Bloody Crossover...**

She would never tell anyone, but she cried the night he and Sloan went back to Seattle.

She wasn't even sure why, because until he'd phoned her out of the blue about his daughter's baby, she hadn't been thinking about him. Occasionally her mind would turn to New York and Derek and her marriage and then to _him, _but she wasn't moping... hell, she thought about freaking _Noah _more than she thought about him. But when he was standing there, right in front of her, naked and with his eyes deeper than she had ever seen them, she couldn't remember why she'd ever let him go.

She'd thought that over the last few years she'd toughed up, that she couldn't be hurt so easily anymore.

She was so wrong.

She'd known before he'd given her his answer that it wasn't about _her _anymore. He didn't love her anymore.

_I'm so sorry, Red._

She cried when he left, because it had taken her all this time to realise that she'd never stopped loving him, not really.

**I don't even want to talk about the crossover. I am just going to write fic.**


	18. Sure feels like more than a week

**Sure feels like more than a week...**

_I can't even look at you right now._

"I've been fucking stupid."  
"What?"

"I was a fucking idiot."  
"Mark? Seriously, did you get the wrong number?"

Silence. Then, "No... I was an idiot, to leave..."  
Sighing on her end. "It's over, Mark. We both know that. I don't have time for this."

"I should have asked you again..."

"Please, Mark..." these tears shouldn't be coming.

"Just hear me out, Addison..."

"It's really not the time... I've got a lot going on and I-"

"Addie..."

"Maya's _pregnant, _Mark. Sam and Naomi need me more than I need to be having this conversation."

A soft, bitter chuckle. "I guess I know something about that."

More sighing, it's only that that tells him she's still on the line.

"It's over. With Lexie. So over. Has been for a long time."

"I can't take this again..."

He sighs this time, trying to put into words what he wants to say - he still loves her, he's always loved her, he's an ass.

"I'm sorry, Addie. I guess... I'm sorry."

Another silence.

"I was wrong, I didn't know what I wanted, I wanted you... let me come back and ask you again..."

"Mark, please-"

He thinks that's it, it's all over, and he's ready to start mourning everything he fucked up.

"How soon can you get a flight?"

**ANGRY CAPITALS GLW SAYS: JOIN ECHANTE'S COMMUNITY MADDYSON AND JOIN THE MADDISON TAKEOVER!!!!!!!!!!!**


	19. So many regrets

**JOIN THE MADDISON TAKEOVER**

**So many regrets**

The fear in Maya's eyes made her think back to the time she'd looked in the mirror one morning, Mark hardly stirring in the bed she'd once shared with her husband behind her, and seen a woman she didn't know.

She wished, right then, more than anything, that she'd walked out of the abortion clinic an hour or so earlier than she had, that she'd never mentioned it to Mark, that she'd never headed to Seattle, that she'd never tried to mend something already broken, that she'd never spent the next five years desperately trying to patch up broken seams of what had once been her fairytale life.

She had so many regrets, but only one of them took physical form in front of her.

A little boy, with a shock of red hair and wide grey eyes, running through a field, eating his breakfast at her kitchen table, sleeping in a blue-painted room down the hall from hers.

He was the only one that really kept her up at night.

**

What she didn't realise, would never realise, that halfway up the coast, in Seattle, someone else lay staring at the ceiling three nights a week with the same face in his head.


	20. Someone Else

**Dear God, am I shipping Mark with someone else?**

**This one's very drabbley.**

She's sure this is the biggest and worst coincidence in the world, but Lucas, who has been practically her son for the last twenty three years, is standing in front of her, introducing her to the lovely Lea's (who they've been hearing about non stop since Lucas met her at Yale) parents.

Because Lea Altman-Sloan's parents happen to be that blonde doctor she glimpsed once, briefly, the last time she ever went to Seattle Grace, and the man she hadn't seen for twenty two years.

The blonde woman - Teddy, maybe? - there's something in her face that suggests recognition, but she's looking bewilderedly up at Mark, who just won't stop staring at her.

She notices Pete tensing beside her, but she hardly considers it.

Lucas has his arm around Lea's shoulders, and confusion is spreading over their faces.

She can think of nothing else, everything is dissolving.

Mark Sloan just won't stop staring at her.


	21. Fifteen Years

**Ok, been a while since I updated this! I'm not ready to talk about what happened in Grey's 9x01 yet, I cried like a baby! This was for a comment ficathon on lj, hope you enjoy. **

**Major 9x01 spoilers.**

**Addison introspective, in the future.**

She doesn't think about her very often these days, Henry's sixteen next Tuesday and Mark's been dead fifteen years... it took a long time, at first she just didn't know how she was going to ever stop thinking about losing him, but she doesn't even think about him that much any more. She's happy, she's married, she's a mother, and she's still as busy as ever... Occasionally before she goes to sleep his face comes into her mind, and she stops for a few moments to think about what might have been. Strangely, what bothers her the most is that Mark doesn't age, he's exactly the same as he was the last time she saw him... hell, he's exactly the same as he was the first time his lips landed on hers in the brownstone in New York when her husband was absent... that hurts more than anything, because it means Mark's suspended in time. It means Mark's not getting older with her, having a few wrinkles round his eyes now the mirror hers, more grey in his hair than brown. She swallows, and grits her teeth when she thinks like that, because it's been fifteen years and she still wakes up some mornings thinking she can change what happened between them, thinking there's still a chance to make things right.

Because she thinks of Ella in those moments, and that's her biggest regret - and she's got many, with her and Mark. When she was younger, and she first moved to New York, she always imagined raising a child there, playing in Central Park with them, that room in the top of their brownstone turned into a nursery... at first it was hers and Derek's child running through the Park with her, and then, however briefly, it was Ella, until she made the worst decision she thinks she will ever make.

There are dreams, sometimes, still. There's her and Mark and a little red-headed, blue-eyed girl on a picnic blanket in the grass, and there's nothing but smiles and laughter and sunshine.

She sighs, grits her teeth and rolls over. She supposes some part of her will always wish she and Mark raised Ella in New York and none of what happened afterwards really ever did.


	22. Hindsight

**This was for another comment ficathon on lj... this one's an AU in my ideal world!**

Hindsight is a wonderful thing, he'll look back on everything that happened that day in New York, caving and cheating, Addison's abortion, getting home and Addison having disappeared... he doesn't think he'll ever regret anything as much in his life. It doesn't really make sense, even to him, but she's been part of his life for so long... she's been the woman he's loved for so long... he doesn't feel quite so alive anymore without her.

He chases her back in the end, and he almost knows he's fighting a losing battle, but he follows her, he keeps trying, because he can't think of anything else he can do. her divorce comes through, and then they're a little bit something for a while... and he thinks the 60-day pact's going to change both of them, but she breaks her promise... and he lies for her, because despite everything, he doesn't want her to hurt.

She vanishes, then, and for a while he tries to move on. There's that weekend in LA, when he's all caught up in Lexie and Sloan, and he shouldn't have treated her like that, he shouldn't have given her false hope... he'll look back on it in years and it was all a mistake... he should have stayed with her. He goes through a difficult period in his llife, and he loses Lexie in a plane crash, and he doesn't think he could be suffering any more than he is.

He has a nightmare, one night, and that's stupid, and childish, and it's Lexie dying in his arms, and then he looks down at her face and it's Addison's, and he suddenly realises he doesn't think his body would even stay alive if he lost her... he wakes up, and losing Lexie was hideous, and he'll never quite get over it, but it occurs to him then that it could have been worse.

He heads over to LA the following summer, and he doesn't even tell her he's coming. Just before he knocks on her door, he sees her and Jake and toddling Henry in the living room, and he nearly walks away for a moment, they look like such a perfect little family. But he doesn't, he bites the bullet and knocks on the door, and thanks the Lord it's Addison that opens it.

He shakes his head a little at himself as he talks. "I've always loved you..." he breathes, running a hand through his hair, "I've always loved you, and I need you, and I've made so many mistakes, but I'm here... I'm here now, and I love you, and I'm falling to pieces, Addie... tell me I've got a chance... tell me you might love me again too..."

The silence seems to last indefinitely.


End file.
